


Kindness is not a four-letter word

by magpie_03



Category: Hannibal (TV), Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Ableism, Alternate Universe - School, American Sign Language, Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC), Autistic Sherlock, Backstory, Canon Autistic Character, Childhood, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Disability, Dysfunctional Family, Epilepsy, Nonverbal!Sherlock, References to Supernatural (TV), Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-05-10
Updated: 2016-11-20
Packaged: 2018-03-29 23:31:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 18
Words: 17,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3914719
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magpie_03/pseuds/magpie_03
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A story about autistic Sherlock, who is very dear to me. I've never done a story, let alone an autistic one, so please bear with me. </p><p>A big thank you to i-am-the-shade (http://i-am-the-shade.tumblr.com/) and physicsshiny (http://physicsshiny.tumblr.com/), who both beta'd this for me. </p><p>Also, this is a work in progress (i.e. a big mess), by no means finished and hopefully not always as bleak and sad. I just wanted to post what I already have.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

1.

“It’s like you’re not even really looking at me”, his mother hisses, her anger and fury piercing the air, “you’re off somewhere else and you’re not paying attention. That is rude. You are rude. Rude. Do you understand that? Sherlock?”

Sherlock is eight years old and given the many he heard the word “understand” he’s no longer sure what the word means. Coming out of his mother’s mouth it sounds like “I’m disappointed with you”, a feeling curled up tightly inside of him, a black hole with teeth. Sherlock, you need to talk to other people. Do you understand? Sherlock, you need to use your words. Do you understand? When his father yells at him, “is this so hard to understand, Sherlock”, the disappointment turns into anger, red and blinding, the tiny teeth of the black hole gnawing at the insides of his racing heart. I want you to use your words, your pointing and grunting will get you nothing. Focus, Sherlock. Sherlock! Sherlock! Focus! I don’t get it. There has to be something wrong. I don’t get it.

“Wrong” is another word Sherlock notices a lot, mentioned by professional medical people. They are kind enough not to use the word directly; they come up with a variety of phrases and term to help everyone understand. The terms are everywhere, in case meetings and discussions, therapy sessions and appointments, making his parents’ voices angry and distant and the hours thick and still. Sherlock keeps tracing the lines on the faded yellow case file paper with his thumb. _Name … Date of Assessment … Date of Birth … Outcome and Evaluation Summary …_ Upon reading the words and not being able to feel them Sherlock smudges the ink and adds his fingerprint to signatures, diagnoses and referrals to make it all official and in good order. Surely he’s to keep a copy for himself, now that there’s not only his name but also his fingerprint on it? His stomach jumps a little at the thought of keeping copies of case files and diagnostic sheets at home, in his room, lined up. Maybe the words will come out then. “He’s quite the little detective, isn’t he”, his therapists would smile wearily in return, seeing Sherlock tampering with the files and flapping his hands in excitement while his mother is busy trying to get the ink off her dress.  
“Sherlock…”  
The prescription for Applied Behavioural Analysis crumbles in his father’s hand as the three of them hurry out of the room. Sherlock, forced to leave without his files, traces the rough and bumpy texture of the wall with his index finger, dreaming of spaces whitewashed with ink.


	2. Chapter 2

“I don’t understand.”  
Sherlock is 12 years old and practices these words everyone morning before school. The words are all there and ready, on paper, in his head. Every morning he repeatedly opens and closes the pages of his notebook, mimicking the rhythm of his speech pattern with the brittle paper under his hands. I … don’t … Sherlock halts in midsentence. A tiny paper cut appears on the edge of his small finger. He mouths the word “understand” and closes the book. 

“Good Morning, Sherlock.”  
Sherlock navigates his way around the kitchen table, past the blaring radio and the merciless morning light. He drops into a chair, knees folded under his chin. The misty November morning has found its way into Sherlock’s head, muting the constant flicker of words, images and melodies.  
“Good Morning, Mother.”  
The voice of his brother, the timbre smug and shiny is by far a more familiar morning greeting. Sherlock’s insides go black as he notices his mother smiling at his older brother in return. Sherlock hasn’t been to public school yet but the expensive uniform and the slicked back hair speak a language Sherlock feels he will never acquire.  
“You’re quite the nice young gentleman now…”  
His mother smiles at Mycroft and brushes fluff off his school uniform. Sherlock twists a curl around his finger, fighting the upcoming burning sensation of shame as he remembers the last time he went to the hair dresser. While the flickering fluorescent lights, loud shrill voices and the metallic, cold sound of the scissors are all but a scream in Sherlock’s memory, the image of his mother silently turning away as his father held him down so his hair could get cut is burned into his retina. Every time he looks in the mirror his fluttering eyelid spells the words freak all over the cracked surface.  
“Sherlock, would you drink your tea please…”  
Sherlock opens his eyes, curl still around his fingers. The words mean nothing but the exasperated look in his mother’s eyes does: you’re still the same as you ever were.  
“Don’t get upset, mother”, Mycroft rising from the table and setting a cup of tea in front of Sherlock, “you know how he is.”  
I am … Sherlock shakes his left wrist in a more immediate response and nearly knocks the tea over. I… His fingers scratch over the wooden surface of the table as he tries to find the right word, any word. Mycroft raises an eyebrow (good job, Sherlock) and returns to his newspaper while his mother is buttering toast, her movements mechanic and sharp, her eyes darting over to Sherlock’s fingers.  
I am …  
Sherlock — understand — talk.  
His mother’s voice echoes loudly in his head, blurring his vision. Understand - talk. Sherlock can hear his heartbeat galloping loudly as if his body was hanging from his shoelaces, lungs crashing under his weight. I am… His mother stomps out of the room, leaving him to the empty sound of the radio and his brother slowly but methodically turning the newspaper pages. Sherlock stares at the words in print. Entire worlds unfold, each just a fingertip away.  
“Sherlock, stop staring at me”, Mycroft Holmes snarls, crumpling the paper. Sherlock’s eyes widen at the words under his brother’s fist. Murder - police - investigation. Mycroft continues to mutter passive aggressive expletives under his breath but Sherlock is sucked into the print. We are looking for evidence and are urging — words that signify, that mean something.


	3. Chapter 3

“But I don’t understand, why isn’t he in a mainstream school?”  
The doctor — a real, medical doctor — raises his eyebrows and looks at Sherlock’s mother who in turn shifts uncomfortably on her chair and clings to her small faux-leather handbag. She already dreads the decision to take her youngest to yet another assessment but with Sherlock being almost 16 years old and still on the verge of a tantrum every day the security of medical routines is soothing the alarming sensation of guilt inside her chest. We always did our best, you see.  
“Well, we don’t quite understand either, but see, with Sherlock…”  
She gives a quick and well-practiced apologetic smile. Sherlock, despite being the centre of attention in the room doesn’t have a place in the conversation. Knees drawn up to his chest, he rubs his wrist repeatedly against the sharp edges of the chair, eyes glazed over. Everything is quiet for a while until …  
“Quiet hands!”  
Sherlock cringes and stops, hands placed on his knees, fingertips together. The doctor hums in approval and makes a mental note to write a lengthy, warm email to that US-American colleague who’s done pioneering research on ABA.  
“I don’t see a way how we could send him to a mainstream school with the self-stimulation and self harm issues being so severe and all-pervasive; his speech development is nowhere where it should be for his age and don’t get me started on—“  
Medical terms present an odd comfort: while the many consonants and vowels create an entirely sterile, faceless room to unpack, store, preserve and freeze feelings medical parlance is also an easy way of saying: this is foreign, this is not of us.  
“… and I know what they say, these children develop and change, but to be frank, we’re still waiting for the major breakthrough. We’re very happy with the college he’s currently attending and see no…”  
“But the college doesn’t seem very happy with Sherlock”, the doctor mutters under his breath, eyes scanning over IQ test results, angrily scribbled notes and an even angrier demand for one Sherlock Holmes, turning 16 next month, to be transferred. If he’s so high-functioning changing schools won’t be such a big issue. Put him on medication, continue therapy, set up an Individual Education Plan and the boy will be golden.  
“I say we’ll go with what the teachers are suggesting: a new school. With intellectual stimulation and the right kind of support I’m sure your son will be reading maths at Oxford!”  
Mrs. Holmes rolls her eyes, her memory going back to what the head of the paediatric unit told her when he first saw her youngest, “you’re either saving for college or custodial care.”  
“And”, the doctor continues, holding up his index finger like testing a wind that is already blowing, “I happen to know a teacher who specializes in educating special needs ki… students with a dis… disabled … students with…” — a quick look at Sherlock -— a disability. We went to school together; he’s a real expert.”  
Sherlock’s mother raises an eyebrow. Given the paperwork piling up on the doctor’s desk another expert is the last thing they need.  
“I’ll put you in touch and see what he can do for you. He’s done amazing work, you should read one of his books…”  
Another eyebrow is raised, this time from Sherlock. The doctor smiles nervously and shuts the file quickly.  
“Here is your prescription for something that will help your son with his mood see you in a month and if there is anything feel free to call good bye have a nice day!”

….

“I don’t understand this. Would you please explain?”  
The look on her husband’s face resembles what she felt during the appointment: utter disbelief. “Yep. Strongly advocated a transferral, he’s got it all set up. They want Sherlock out of the school. We should embrace ‘new intellectual challenges’, or something, I don’t even remember what…”  
“Because challenges is what we’re all craving for in the Holmes household”, her eldest murmurs from the study across the living room. “Don’t think a minute about it. I don’t want him at my school.”  
“Mycroft, please…”  
“No.” Mycroft Holmes shuts his Encyclopedia Britannica and looks at his parents with a gaze his teachers referred to as the “Holmesian poker face” (not knowing that in a few years to come his younger brother will get much better at the stiff upper lip trick than any member of the Holmes family was or ever will be). “This is out of the question. What on earth am I to do when he has one of his meltdowns in the middle of a lesson? Mycroft, would you please physically restrain your brother so he won’t tear the classroom apart?” Mycroft laughs bitterly, his gaze on the many marks Sherlock’s fingernails left on the table of his study.  
“Well, Sherlock actually never really hurt anyone”, his father quietly intervenes, fingertips drawn together, “it’s just himself that he… well... seems to have an uneasy relationship with.”  
“An uneasy relationship with his self? Your son is disabled”, mother Holmes hollers through the living room. Mycroft rolls his eyes and returns to his books, he knows what will follow, the all too familiar “he’s not disabled he’s just different” argument that set is parents apart the moment Sherlock was dropped into this world but the world wasn’t ready for him. He still feels uncomfortable at the thought of his small brother (technically Sherlock is his younger brother but the phrase is deep-seated inside of him) going to the same school, uncomfortable at the many whispers and gazes that are to come but as long as he can keep the idea and, if necessary, Sherlock at arm’s length there is nothing to worry about, he concludes, eyes resting on the familiar pictures of the Encyclopedia. He wets a thumb to turn the page, his thoughts saturated with the words in front of his eyes. His parents’ shouting fades away as Mycroft closes his eyes. There is whole world underneath his hands and Sherlock and his issues aren’t part of it. 

…

“Your son is…”  
Sherlock raises his head from the newspaper he immersed himself in and closes his eyes, fingertips automatically pressed together. The carpet under his feet is vibrating with the sound of screaming voices and slamming doors. Apart from the many useless and grotesque things he had learned at school (drama without music instruments, cooking without sharp knifes, math without calculus -- the perks of special education) breathing techniques come in handy, all the more when the ground you are walking on isn’t yours, it belongs to your parents now, their lengthy arguments, their scorn, their guilt and their fears. You’re the centre, you’re the focal point of this dysfunctional family, a psychologist once told Sherlock when he was seven years old, much too young to really understand but the words had sunk in anyway, all the therapy and you’re still the same. Now keep your hands still.  
His hands tremble; the memory aches. Sherlock focuses on his heartbeat and the slight rumble in his lungs. In — out.  
“I did so much for him … drove him to all the therapies…”  
In — out.  
“And where is he standing now? We can’t even let him stay alone in the house for more than a few minutes, did you see what he did to his arm last week…”  
Sherlock’s fingers automatically trace the set of bruises and cuts on his right arm, lines not unlike the ones in his case file, but these are written on his body instead, with more permanent ink. His mother had screamed blue murder when she saw what he had done until Mycroft intervened (out of pity, not out of care, Sherlock learned to distinguish between the two) and helped him into his room and even let him stay in one of his ‘safe places’, a tiny dark corner underneath a desk he grew very fond of when he was a child and had fallen headfirst for all things Harry Potter (now he prefers to fold himself away for different reasons). He quickly blinks a few times until the lump in his throat disappears. His eyelids are getting better at the flutter and spell trick; he made it from 'freak' to 'embarrassment' without a mistake.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hello! Sorry about the massive delay in posting, uni and work had me hard pressed for writing time. Anyway, here is what I've been working on ... enjoy, and feedback is always welcome (so is criticism). 
> 
> As always, massive thanks to physicsshiny and the-broken-teacup on tumblr, who both beta'd this for me.
> 
> Also, trigger warning for mention of abuse.

4.1

_Excuse me, Sir, I don’t understand?_

"I know, John, this sounds like a lot of responsibility but you, of all people…”

The headmaster smiles at the student sitting in front of his desk, one John Hamish Watson, age 16, exceptionally bright and with that family background … he clears his throat as if clearing his head from intrusive thoughts. Yes, that’s it. John Watson is the perfect man for the job of handling that minefield of a family.

“John, this is a pilot project … a mentoring program!”

John’s eyebrows are a solid horizontal line now, his face a frown. “A _mentoring_ program?”

“Yes, well, see, you know surely about your school’s tradition to provide an education for all people and... uhh…” The headmaster looks down on his well-fed belly but can’t exactly remember the tradition he is supposed to defend after all… surely something substantial, something Victorian, mid 19-C, where everyone had his place in society. Sound moral principles, that’s it. “Providing an education for the people, defending moral principles…”

“Mr. Gradegrind, by all respect, I fail to see the connection here”, John interrupts impatiently, “I don’t have any formal training! I have no experience! Why me?”

“Because you are a student representative of the school, that’s why”, Mr. Gradegrind snaps, wringing his hands nervously, “John, I really think this will serve you both. Sherlock is a nice young man…”

John scratches his head and stares at the teacher. “So is this like an extended extracurricular activity? Showing him around, helping him with his homework?”

“Uh, yes, in a way it is…”

Gradegrind shuffles through a pile of few papers stacked on his desk to avoid John’s eyes. The thick, official-looking letter, complete with a stamp and a doctor’s nearly illegible scrawl is right at the bottom of pile. “You will, uhm… support the student and… errr… provide a source of guided functional peer support! That’s it.” Gradegring smiles back at his soon-to-be-mentor, neither of them knowing what that ugly bulk phrase is supposed to even mean. A source of guided functional peer support? _What_? “And, John,” Gradegrind is still smiling, showing all teeth, “This will help significantly with your application for medical school.”

“Hmm…” John can’t help the little jump his stomach does upon hearing the word “med school”. He’s on an academic scholarship, he has responsibilities. He can’t say no. Certainly Sherlock is nice and quiet and just needs a helping hand now and then. He even faintly remembers his mother’s cousin, she had a friend whose daughter was somehow “challenged” (at least that’s the term his mother’s cousin’s friend used) and who (according to the cousin) was conducting doctoral research in literature! The nightmares he saw on TV and read about in books, the children wearing diapers, hitting themselves and not communicating at all … that won’t be Sherlock. I mean, he must have stellar grades, otherwise he would never have been admitted, John reasons, finding himself in the brittle safety of prejudices and preconceptions. He’s yet to learn the meaning of the words _privilege_ and _disability perk_.

“So… when will the mentoring program start?”

“Uh, this is on rather short notice… next week.” Gradegrind smiles benevolently, pleased at how things fall in place. He set up a mentoring program and secured funding for it. Golly.

“Uh, ok, so … when will I meet the student… Sherlock?”

 John’s stomach jump at the sound of the name, the two syllables, as if he was standing atop of a building and looking down into something deep.

"Uh, to be honest... the Holmes family is rather … uh… concerned … so, uhm… they have suggested a meet up, an ice-breaker, what do you say?”

John rubs his forehead, a faint headache setting in. An ice-breaker? “Ok… when?” “This afternoon.”

John sighs and opens his mouth to disagree (he has a coffee date at three, goddammit) but Gradegrind steamrolls over him, “AND, dear John, they are really worried about your well being in this project so they hired this, ugh, tutor… he’s a … errr…”, another shuffle in the papers, what kind of bloody tutor did they hire, after all, “he both works as a…err.. as a… a teacher and a professor at university! John, this man is fantastic. He published widely on the subject and teaches and will surely help you and Sherlock get together!” Gradegrind beams like a child on Christmas. A new programme for the school, secured funding and an expert as a tutor. Golden times.

“So, uh, okay.. then I better get ready and uh… see you in a few hours?” The way John stands on his heels, handshake beginning to get firm, Gradegrind can’t help but smile. If only we had more students like him! And more funding.

4.2 

John remains in the doorframe, not sure what to make of the scene in front of him: Gradegrind, oily hair, shiny suit and a mismatched cravat, dancing around the office like Rumpelstiltskin, two parents, nervously wringing their fingers, a chair in each hand and a nervous, exhausted look on their faces, a third person in a stylish tweed jacket and a pair of jeans talking enthusiastically to Gradegrind, or the two students … one he immediately recognizes as Mycroft Holmes ( _that slicked back arse_ ) … and… John’s eyes widen with surprise at the sight of the thin, lanky boy with the messy dark hair next to Mycroft. This must be Sherlock and he’s Mycroft’s … _brother_?  John immediately recognizes the familiarity: same dark hair, same tall body, same posture, except Sherlock is arguably 20 pounds less, his body all sharp angles with his hands so red and raw fairly classic (John is pretty sure about that) for a case of atopic eczema. Mycroft never said he had a brother. He’d talk at length about the academic tradition he grew up in, about his parents, their professions and the prestige, but a brother? John swallows hard. Mycroft doesn’t even look like his usual, proud, shiny Mycroft-y self. He’s attempting to guide Sherlock to a chair, leading him on his elbow and talking quietly to him but Sherlock refuses, scratching his right upper arm furiously and backing away. John frowns. Why can’t Sherlock decide for himself where he wants so sit? Mycroft rolls his eyes and grabs Sherlock’s hands, dragging him to a chair. John’s stomach sinks. This isn’t going very well.

“Ah, John, there you are! Come in!”

Gradegrind’s roaring voice stops all the movement in the room— all eyes (except Sherlock’s) are set on John now, who smiles nervously in return, the corner of his mouth pinned to his cheeks.

“Hello John, we’re so pleased to finally meet you —“

“Hello Mr. Holmes, Mrs. Holmes—“

“Hi John, good to have you on board—“

John nods pragmatically, with Mycroft grinning back with the grace of a shark (one word to another person and I will burn the heart out of you). He drops into a chair next to Gradegrind and glances nervously at Sherlock. Surely it’d be rude not to say hello to his new mentee but he doesn’t know how. Of course he had done research over lunch break; the DSM had offered the convenience of long lists to be ticked off, expectations and preconceptions about what Sherlock should and shouldn’t be doing, symptoms and the overall clinical picture, but nowhere did it say what he, John, could do. His thoughts race as he continues to stare at the thin figure in the chair. Sherlock has stopped scratching his arm but stares blankly at the floor, biting his lips, fingertips drawn together. _He’s so scared, he doesn’t want to be here…_ John’s thoughts go round and round. t _This can’t be righ_ t…

The man in the tweed jacket clasps his hands together. Sherlock jumps at the noise. The lump in John’s throat grows bigger. “Why don’t we sit in a nice circle together so we can function better as a group? What do you say, Sherlock?”

….

“I’m really glad we’re here together…” Sherlock stares at the vomit-green carpet under his feet. If this is the “promise and privilege of higher education,” as his father so gleefully put it, he’d gladly opt for the creaky wooden floor of his bedroom or even the clinical, cheap hospital lino in his old school. Carpet swallows every sound, the sound of your own breathing, the tapping of your leg.

“To be here together and…”

The man in the tweed jacket talks and talks and talks. Sherlock squints his eyes and tilts his head slightly to one side. He can tell by the shoelaces and the scrubbed, whitewashed material that these shoes aren’t new; someone went to great lengths to give them a shiny outside. Either the man has an obsessive relationship with his shoes, Sherlock reasons, or he’s the sort of expert to give an impeccable first impression, no matter how weak and worn the material under his feet is. Either way, there’s a lot to tell about this man and before he can remind himself he shakes his left wrist in a far more immediate and familiar response.

“Sherlock, _please_ …”

Mycroft grabs his hand before Sherlock can’t even begin to explain — it was the man’s shoes, his shoelaces and look at the state of his jacket (not new either, coffee stains on the left sleeve yet no sign of regular caffeine intake or even addiction on his clean-shaven face it DOESN’T FIT TOGETHER SOMETHING IS WRONG with the image — his fingers are muted again. Sherlock bites his lip and feels an all too familiar burning sensation his stomach: he got carried away again. Focus. Focus. It doesn’t matter about the shoes or the jacket or the coffee, Sherlock. Focus. The voices around him are all sharp and angular. The man looking like a cheap caricature out of a Charles Dickens’ novel is roaring with laughter, his belly wobbling like an old pair of bellows. Is this privilege? A deafening interest in the sound of your own voice?

“So, as I said, I would like to go to medical school…”, a faceless voice continues. Sherlock looks up. The student next to the bellow-bellied man smiles sheepishly, the dimples on his cheeks illustrating a perpetual frown that seems to be carved into his face. Sherlock frowns back: his manner of speaking doesn’t suggest a very promising medical career. “…and become a doctor.” Sherlock huffs. The rhythm of his speech is too regular, the carefully planted falling pitch movement all too carefully inserted to signify statement instead of a question. The low pitch and flat tone give away tedious academic responsibilities, probably a prestigious scholarship and great expectations. Sherlock presses his fingertips together. He could hear it all in his voice. Is this education? To wear future failure all over your face? His fingertips tingle.

“Very well, so, Sherlock … please introduce yourself to the group.”

Sherlock’s throat goes dry immediately. He becomes painfully aware of the frown he is still wearing. _Smile, Sherlock_. _Look people in the eye_. Mycroft nudges him. “Sherlock, introduction, come on”, the way you would command a dog to perform a trick.

_"I…"_

Breathing techniques and flashes of memories swirl together. He can feel his jawbone cracking. _I don’t have a voice. I don’t have a place in this room._

_“I, um…”_

There are words and they are coming out of his mouth. Sherlock can’t remember actually wanting to produce these sounds.

_“I, I…”_

Plenty of speech therapy has made him aware of all the ways he can’t control his body. Memories like a scream, masked by the comfort of medical jargon and therapists with high-pitched voices and cold smiles. _Failure to thrive. Disparity between receptive and expressive language skills. Gross motor deficits. Evidence and interpretation_. Sherlock’s mouth goes dry. What was he supposed to do again?

“Sherlock…”

The introduction. His throat is a minefield; one wrong movement and his body will blow up. The insides of his head would look great on creamy office wallpaper.

“Um… I … err…my name is Sherlock Holmes and ... and… uhm.. I’m.. Sixteen and… my interests in…”

Sherlock pauses for a moment to think this through. Interests are hard: how can you possibly make other people understand the tingling, comforting sensation of passion and curiosity all bundled up in one word? “Include… chemistry. And bees.” Mycroft rolls his eyes and groans. Chemistry and bees.

“Sherlock, that was amazing! Good job!”

Sherlock flinches. _Good job Sherlock!_ The immediate verbal praise burns. The man in the tweed jacket exercises an empty smile, muscle movement a mere excuse for the clinical gaze on his face. Sherlock’s insides go black; all of a sudden he is eight years old again and he is to be fixed by therapists. _Good job Sherlock!_ As he would eventually give in and shut down after hours of "social training", screaming and crying. _Good Job Sherlock!_ In the feeding clinic where there was food whose smells and taste hurt more than the broken nose he got in kindergarten when he smacked himself across the face. Good Job Sherlock! He didn’t report being in pain, how were we to know?


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning for mention of peer abuse and the r-slur.

2 months later  
  
John shivers, cold winter air burning in his lungs. It's a dreary winter day where the sun doesn’t seem to move at all; a grey lump of indifference hanging low in the sky.

“Hi John—“

“Good to see you—“

“Nice Christmas sweater —”

  
John grins, pointing to the reindeer embroidery on his chest. “Early Christmas present from Sherlock’s parents. Sherlock won’t go near it —“ John shrugs his shoulders, he truly didn’t mind at all, “and reindeers are lovely animals.”  
“Lovely indeed”, Sally, John’s lab partner in biology and lunch companion, murmurs, teeth clenched. “Can we go inside and stand in awe of your sweater where it’s warm and there’s food? I’m starving—“

  
“We have to wait for Sherlock—“ John murmurs, avoiding her eyes.

  
“Just text him and say he’ll meet us in the dinning hall—“ Sally’s voice is swallowed by the double doors and the laughter of her ever-present boyfriend, Anderson. John can feel his stomach hanging in his knees. Where the hell is Sherlock, he’s never been late—

  
“Come on, John, your mentee isn’t blind, he’ll find us—“

  
John sighs and steps inside, clutching to his phone. No new text messages in the last hour. John bites his lip, trying to get used to a new, darker kind of silence — the absence of a body where a body should be. With Sherlock, John has learned so far, silences can take many forms — rich and warm, when Sherlock is immersing himself in the newspaper or his chemistry books and John nearby, nose in the same textbook, sometimes even on the same page. This isn’t shared silence though. This is darkness and worry and John finds himself alone in it, the horror banging itself against his head. _What if he’s lost and doesn’t know how to reach me, I’m responsible and I—_

  
“John, this is the school’s cafeteria, not a battle ground—“ Sally murmurs, grabbing John’s arm and dragging him inside, “come on, everyone is waiting and the food is getting cold.”

  
John is led to a table right near a window, automatically frowning at the bright light. Sally rolls her eyes. She’s picked up on Sherlock ever since he beat her in a biology test. “He’s got that funny brain inside his head but you know what, John, he’s just a big baby”, she snarled as Sherlock beamed under the praise. “The teachers like him because he’s scoring constantly 90% in everything but outside the classroom he’s a ret—“

  
“Hey John have you seen that new TV show? The one with the two brothers and the angel?”

  
Thirty minutes into the conversation John feels himself at ease, belly full with toffee pudding. Maybe Sherlock skipped lunch and headed right to the library, John finds himself thinking dully, or maybe he’s still in the chemistry lab—

  
“Yeah, as I said. I mean—uh—“

  
 Sherlock is standing right in front of their table, snowflakes melting in the dark mop of curls, blinking rapidly, phone in front of him like a dowsing rod.

  
“Somebody is late it appears” — Sally murmurs under her breath before commanding loudly, “you have to get a seat from another table.”

  
“Take my seat, Sherlock” — John jumps up, not sure what to do with the rush of adrenaline and guilt pulsing in his veins. There are snowflakes everywhere, in his hair, on the collar of his coat, even on his nose. Sherlock reminds John of a figure inside a snow globe someone grabbed and turned upside down.

  
“You can sit down, it’s okay.” John prompts him by touching his upper arm. Slowly, Sherlock grabs the chair and sits on the edge of it, legs folded under his body like a pair of tangled shoelaces. The skin on his hands looks battered and cracked. John bites his tongue.

  
“Do you want something to eat?”

  
John takes a mismatched chair from another table. Sherlock shakes his head and stares at the table, tracing the scrapping marks generations of knives and forks, of ravenous students and heated lunch conversations left on the surface underneath his fingers. _He’s always been so resentful, Mycroft’s voice echoes in John’s head, Sherlock has an elephant’s memory when it comes to two things: the infrastructure of London and other people._

  
“So, Sherlock. John told me you like that TV Show? Supernatural?”

  
Anderson grins and stares Sherlock up and down, oblivious to the way Sherlock cringes at the sound of his voice. John’s stomach cramps harder. He tries to mouth “leave him alone” but Anderson smirks and glances over to Sally. _This has all been rehearsed_ , John can’t help thinking, they were just waiting for Sherlock to appear and —  
“It's pretty good, yeah”, Sally continues, eyes glistening, “I’m doing a presentation on Autism Spectrum Disorder in  Castiel for my psychology class. He totally fits the bill… right, Sherlock?”

  
The lanky figure opposite him freezes on the spot, fingernails scratching over a deep cut on the table. John groans and kicks her under the table.

  
“I mean what do you think, Sherlock? John told me he’s your favourite character!”

  
Sherlock blinks rapidly, snowflakes slowly melting and running down his cheeks. The pulsing lump of guilt in John’s stomach turns ice-cold.

  
“No reaction…” Sally giggles.

  
Sherlock’s nails still scratch over the table as he begins to chew furiously on his lips, peeling the skin away with his fingers. John breathes deeply. Calm down and redirect. “Sherlock, why don’t we go outside for a bit?”

  
Their laughter still rings in his ears as he leads Sherlock outside the fire exit, purposefully ignoring stares and whispers. They step back into the cold. Sherlock’s fingers are still drawn to his lips, tearing his mouth into bloody shreds.

  
“Sherlock…”

  
A small trail of blood is running down his lower lip. John is fumbling for a tissue, trying hard not to give himself away to the realization that he should have known better. There was something the DSM didn’t tell him and it was pulsing in his fingertips.

  
“SHERLOCK!”

  
John yells but knows he will not get an answer, not now. Sherlock stalks back to the main building, towards the library, hand still drawn to his mouth. John closes his eyes as snow continues to fall in grey lumps. There is still a plume of smoke — evidence of their breath — hanging low before his eyes as the figure disappears inside the building, dropping out of focus.   
  


  
...

  
Sherlock folds his body up in a chair, dragging his fluttering eyelid and shaking hands with him like a limp. There’s a book on the table in front of him and Sherlock does as best as he can to settle his eyes on the predictability of printed words, of page numbers and chapters, of a narrative universe that _makes sense_ , but each thought clangs inside his head like a cracking vertebra in the spine. He can feel the eyes of the other students resting on him and all the ways his body moves. While the language of discomfort is subtle and hidden (an embarrassed nod, a raised eyebrow or two, rubbing you hands together one too many times) social exclusion is much more straightforward: looks burning right through him, mouths smirking at the way he is sitting on his hands. _What’s the retard doing here._

  
“…”

  
There is a pair of trainers in front of him. He instantly recognizes the way the body weight is balanced on the inner, more weaker arches of the shoe but doesn’t avert his eyes from the book. The print is like a safety net, his limbs all tangled up in syllables and characters.   
“…”

  
There is a voice and a pair of hands and melting snowflakes on the floor but they all fade into distance as Sherlock copies notes into his notebook like he could rewrite the scene, rewind it on the magnetic tape holding his mind together. [Co(NH3)6]3+. The numbers and letters string together and form a pattern, a soothing membrane between his raw mind and the outside world, equally raw, but in a way Sherlock can’t touch or feel. Na+. I’m sorry, his eyelid says. I’m sorry but I can’t get the words out. Cu2+. I’m sorry I’m different.

  
“…”

  
 The trainers in front of him speak of belonging, of sharing, of connection. They probably have been bought on a shopping trip with others, friends or family, laughing, having a good time, together. Sherlock lowers his gaze on his shoes. He ordered them online, after his old pair of trainers basically died after a particular wet winter where he would have to wear three pairs of socks so his toes wouldn’t turn blue. Mycroft sneered at him and his ‘antisocial tendencies’ but his parents let him buy his clothes online anyway, glad to see their youngest is finally taking some interest in his well being. It’s just other people in the shops, grow the hell up. Sherlock digs his fingernails deep into palms. He tried to make his body believe that it’s just people people, it’s just light and touch and smells but the words never stuck. Instead, they ripped a hole inside him and filled it with something dark and burning.

  
“…”

  
The trainers disappear. Sherlock lifts his gaze. He can tell by the way the shadows are moving outside — subtle, grey mist, almost invisible in the steel-coloured sky outside —  that he should be in the classroom and work his way through Latin translations. Descendere. Descendo, descendis, descendit. Sherlock immediately curls up in the soft, smoothing rhythm of the verb. Descendimus, descenditis, descendunt. The shadows are still moving outside as Sherlock falls asleep on the table, letters and numbers murmuring under his skin.   
  



	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> New chapter everybody!
> 
> As always, massive thanks to my faithful beta-readers, physicsshiny and the-broken-teacup.
> 
> Also a big THANK YOU to everyone who's been reading, commenting and leaving kudos so far :) it means a lot to me. 
> 
> Trigger warning for a flashback involving gore/blood. Please be discerning if you are triggered by these things and have a cuppa instead.

“I don’t know, I mean, they don’t really bully him but—“

“But what—“

Molly stares at John, her frown giving away what John has been thinking all along. They weren’t really bullying him but. But Sally imitating Sherlock’s gait and the way he taps his fingertips as if practising a fancy Bach fugue. But Anderson rolling his eyes whenever Sherlock opens his mouth and giggling behind his back, making sure Sherlock hears the outburst of laughter when he thinks he can’t see them. But Sherlock looking sad when he thinks no one can see him.

“I…”

A faceless grey afternoon; sad winter light turning people into shadows, shadows into silhouettes, silhouettes into ghosts.

“I don’t know what to do. I thought it would be different, with him, I mean…“

Sherlock waving his fingers the way other people would say _this is a nice place_ , Sherlock spinning in circles as if saying _the world is turning so fast I need space to breathe_ , Sherlock wearing the same thick, black coat every day to put a shell between the world and himself.

“I read the medical literature...”

John grabs the teacup, feeling like he’s travelling back in time. The café has been Molly’s and John’s “study” for over a year now, a clash of coincidences, of sharing the same hospital wing during work experience and sharing lunch breaks and ended up meeting weekly in a small café right next to the hospital, cups balancing on thick medical books and the belief that a medical diagnosis is the much needed wall between your patient, your self, and your discomfort.

“But the clinical picture doesn’t suggest…”

Sometines John can still feel the hospital’s wings hovering over the small and cosy place, the flickering fluorescent lights, bloody gloves and the _snap crack pop_ of scalpels cutting into flesh, pulsing underneath the well worn carpet. These are other images. Images he can’t go near.

“Tell me…”

It starts raining, people hiding underneath umbrellas like turtles inside their shells. A toddler is jumping up and down at the sight of raindrops running on the window.

“If you need anything…”

 _I thought it would be different._ The reality of “special needs” is hitting him full force — the grey zone of not being disabled enough and thus not really qualified for a pat on the back and a well-meaning smile, but not fitting in anywhere else either. Vast swathes of nonexistence, your breath turning into condensation on cold glass. _Mummy look the window is crying._

“Anything, at all…”

John stares into his tea, trying to find answers in the dark brown tea leaves so similar to the leaves still hanging in the trees, falling on the pavement, sticking to shoes, leaving a sour aftertaste.

“Just let me know…”

It would be easy to say “it’s Sherlock” and “he’s just different” and “I should have said no” but John doesn’t have the words. He can still feel Sherlock’s gaze again, the way he fiercely stared at the microscope as the slur hit him in the back. The cover glass cracked like a frozen lake, deeply and invisibly.

“Thank you Molly…” John hurries outside, the cold a reminder that the world is still breathing.

….

 _Remember tender things tenderly._ Collect memories and put them in order. By color, by smell, by touch, by feel. The pale evening light is reflected on the room’s ceiling; the shadows are moving and flickering like light at the surface of the ocean. Reflections of the Holmes family on the wall like somewhere else another family is having dinner as well. Bodies only visible in the absence of light. Conversations like two mirrors facing each other. _What you guys call the apocalypse, I used to call Sunday dinner!_

“So Mycroft, how’s school going?”

Sherlock inhales carefully, the stuffy sticky air nothing like the breezy sea climate, where the ocean’s breath opens something inside of you. The smug voice of his brother a distant murmur in his ears, like the mumble of waves. The memory of seawater itches in his bones. _Remember tender things tenderly._

“Really well, I’m being considered for another internship and… ”

When he was five his parents went on the annual Holmes Vacation and decided to trade London for a remote island somewhere in Eastern Frisia in Germany. While Mycroft developed a rather heated relationship with the local birds after one of them snatched away his sandwich (keeping a stiff upper lip doesn’t work on seagulls), the sound of the ocean breathing next to him reverberated deep inside Sherlock. He even befriended a fjord horse whose job was to transport an endless stream of tourists from one end of the island to another. He can still feel her warm breath against his hands, his parents’ worried expressions while the pony just put his head in his lap, waiting to be cuddled. Memories are visceral. They make you re-experience time, make you rewind the magnetic tape inside your head. The sound of seagulls screaming and toes tipping into sand and the ocean’s breath and you are full of noise and power.

“Getting the chance to network, a really unique opportunity… ”

Mycroft is going and on, his air of self-importance even more obnoxious than the aftershave he is wearing. Sherlock looks down at the mess of spaghetti on his plate. No one is asking him about school.

“Important connections…”

There is no longer the soft murmur of waves underneath his skin, only the deafening roar of his thoughts. Images so black and bile he can’t touch them. He doesn’t even need a microscope to get that a sense of detail; fear comes in high resolution. _School is going ok. I mean, not ok. Maybe ok? I don’t know what ok means. I got a really good grade on my chemistry midterm but I didn’t tell anyone. John pretended not to look at my sheet but he did._

“And with a sense of tradition… ‘traditions define us’, as I said…”

_He is wearing the tacky reindeer sweater. I tried to tell him he looks ridiculous but his friends seem to like it. They also like him, though they seem to like him less now that I am involved. I can see it in the way Sally smiles at him but her eyes are empty; she’s smiling with the polished white of her teeth. She’s also cheating on her boyfriend Anderson. He’s playing along though. Yesterday he called me a freak and Sally laughed so much she had tears in her eyes._

“Mycroft, we’re so proud of you.”

Sherlock keeps still, hands inside his sleeves, so nothing could bump into him, not his mother clearing the table, not his father shifting in his chair and clearing his throat, not Mycroft folding his hands over his belly and smiling to himself.

“Sherlock, your dinner is getting cold.”

He startles, the noise of china clattering against china vibrating in his bones. Dinner is long finished and everybody is ready, even the shadows flicker on the wall impatiently. _Somebody’s late it appears_. His plates is flying through the air and he’s back at the beach, the ocean breathing inside him, the sea lending its ear to shrill voices, clattering china and slamming doors so he doesn’t have to listen, so he’s safe.

…

John leans back in the kitchen chair. The yellow wallpaper and wooden chairs make the silence soft to touch, like honey dissolving in warm milk. _Leftovers are in the fridge, your sister is at Clara’s. Will be back later. xx Mom_. John can tell by the hectic scrawl on the back of a bill and the smudges of ink on the table that his mother is working double shifts again, turning time into money so he can be sent to a school where wealth exists in the form of nuclear families driving tank-like SUVs.

The fridge sighs impatiently. John gets up and looks inside, half-expecting to find bloody thumbs next to the cheese judging by the smell of decomposing food.

“Urghhh….”

He grabs an apple and settles himself back in front of his laptop, sharing his scarce dinner with the distant sound of the neighbour playing music and flipping through TV channels like she’s trying to drown herself in a wave of sound.

_Heathcliff it’s me — Cathy…_

Kate Bush, of all things. John frowns at the wallpaper. The neighbour’s mood cycles align with Kate Bush songs and Wuthering Heights is almost always a sign for frantic phone calls at two in the morning.

_Come home — I’m so cold!_

He stares at his laptop, his thoughts wandering back to Sherlock, picturing him in a large living room, sitting with his back to the window, frostbite on the glass like notches in the spine.

“…”

Heathcliff and Cathy are still screaming behind the wallpaper as John climbs up the stairs to his room, tea on his fingertips, laptop pressed to his rip cage, his room lit up like he’s trying to keep something dark outside. _If you torch a forest it grows right back._ Various light bulbs nod and hum and spit their light everywhere. _I’m sorry Sherlock_. The sound of Wuthering Heights dies down as John restarts his laptop, opens his email program and looks up _Holmes, Sherlock._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Remember tender things tenderly" is from Karen Green's memoir Bough Down.
> 
> "If you torch a forest / it grows right back" is a line from Matt Rasmussen's poem "'Elegy in X Parts", published in Black Aperture. 
> 
> "What you guys call the apocalypse, I used to call Sunday dinner!" is from Supernatural S05 E08, Changing Channels. Gabriel is the coolest archangel in town.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hello everyone,
> 
> Lo and behold! A new chapter.
> 
> Apologies for the delay but life has been overwhelming and I've just been trying to keep sane for so long.
> 
> (Trigger warning for self-harm.)

The bruise is changing color like his skin is trying to remember and forget at the same time. Memory takes many forms. Sherlock resists the urge to touch, rub and pick and trace the bruise, to feel the images underneath his skin. The breathless pulse of blue and violet, yellow and green in his bones a murmur, an affirmation. He’s still a person, a body and a name and a crumbling wall of yellow and green, like autumn leaves scattered on the ground, waiting for someone to pick them up and press them into thick books, crimson colours bleeding into black print.

“Sherlock, time for your meds!”

Sherlock slowly rolls an eye towards the door, his noise resting on his kneecaps. He knows his dad is trying to sound “positive” and “encouraging” (as suggested in the reading material the psychiatrist recommended) but he’s shaking the pillbox a little too enthusiastically, the strain in his voice a little too obvious. He doesn’t really believe in reading books anyway, doesn’t believe in psychopharmacology, and doesn’t know that his son isn’t taking the medication he was prescribed. That didn’t stop him from pinning the list of side effects to grandma’s biscuit recipe and buying a pillbox though, just to be on the safe side, numbers and statistics hoops to jump through on the yellow brick road to parental success. 1 in 10,000; 1 in 68; 1 in 4. _And a mainstream school no less! It’s all going very well -- Sherlock is just not the communicative type._

 _And really, can it get any worse…_ father Holmes finds himself thinking as his youngest is entering the kitchen, careful not to step on the lines between tiles, the sleeves of his hoodie over his hands. Little does he know about the perks of being _on_ _the safe side_ , of having your words and not losing them, the ground under your feet solid and all yours, not shifting and crumbling like a paper that’s been folded one too many times.  

The kitchen walls are already asleep, creamy white fading into indifferent grey. Sherlock puts the pills into his mouth, moving them under his tongue. He can see his reflection in the window, the kitchen lights taking all color out of his complexion. His father is staring into space, unaware of Sherlock studying the scene in the window, unaware of the details his body is giving away, the bags under his eyes, pressure mark on his left wrist, smudged ink on his index finger.

The tablets make his mouth go numb. Sherlock grabs the sleeves of his hoodie tightly. The shadows on the walls have migrated outside and are now stuck in frost and darkness, like two actors in a silent movie, the script written all over their bodies. Sherlock fumbles with his hoodie strings, the cord tightly wrapped around his wrists. _I’m tired, Dad, I’ll go to bed._ His dad closes the pillbox mechanically, the cheap plastic rattling in his hands. _Sure. Good night, Sherlock. Don’t stay up too late._ As Sherlock makes the way back to his room the floor underneath his feet murmurs and cracks, soaked with light spilling and leaking under closed doors.

 

…

The trees bend their knotty knees and scratch their fingers on frostbitten windows. The small hours make the walls crumble and by now Sherlock has gotten used to the different forms and shapes silence can take. Mycroft in the room next to his, dull murmur and the occasional cough giving away anxiety over grades and uni admission; his parents’ bedroom usually half empty, with his dad falling asleep on the sofa in the living room, the shadows of a late night TV show running on his face like he’s wearing his dreams inside out. Sherlock scrolls through a couple of newspapers and scowls at the cases presented there. Ever since his parents got him a laptop (in hope not to have their newspaper cut to shreds every morning) Sherlock has been scanning online news reports, absence of crucial details mixed with the usual, fair amount of sensationalism -- reality of the naïve. He shuts his computer and returns to his chemistry books (technically they are Mycroft’s but with his older brother being obsessed with the National Admissions Test for Law the books went missing without notice). Up to his nose in equations, the sound of his phone blends into the back of Sherlock’s mind. Just as he’s about to turn the damn thing off a new email springs into his eyes. _John.Watson@..._ Sherlock freezes on the spot, feeling like he’s fallen on his back, hard. Voices like a needle is running on his arm, tracing the bumpy lines. Anderson and Sally laughing, supported by a faceless crowd. _John wants to drop out of the mentoring programme_. The teacher’s harsh voice ringing in his ears, the sound of his own, faint humming. _They are going to kick me out and send me back, back to the school where people call you sweetheart and expect you to sit by the window and count red cars and moan all day._

_They are going to send me back._

…

The images are rotating now, as if someone replaced his brain with a swirl top. Sherlock is clutching his head, his breath ragged and rapid. _They are going to send me back._

_…_

Anderson and Sally laughing and whispering during lunch and John yelling his name. 

_They are going so send me back_.

…

The words are spinning and sinking deeper and deeper. Black print seeps into his blood. 

___They are going to send me back._

…

Mycroft turning his back to his younger brother, laughing with his friends while the silence inside Sherlock grows louder and louder. 

_They are going to send me back._

…

Silence roaring in his ears as he’s scratching and biting his skin but there’s no blood coming out of his arm it’s just silence, thick and lubricious, running over his arm, on his jeans, the stain getting bigger and bigger.

_They are going to send me back._

…

Sherlock, this is John

…

_They are going to send me back._

…

John Watson

…

_They are going to send me back._

…

I wanted to let you know that -- _they are going to send me back_

_…_

Let you know that

_They are going to send me back._

_...  
_

You know that I

…

_They are going to..._

…

I care about you

…

_They are_

...

You

…

I…

…

…

…

…

The problem with memory is not the images. It’s images forming and blooming and breathing under your skin. You and your images will move in circles. They see and hear and smell everything that you do. Sherlock turns the laptop off and slowly repeats the email, mouthing the words, letting John’s voice run over the images like a filter. Inverting the colors. Adding warmth. _I care about you_. That night, Sherlock falls asleep like an old book in a winter coat.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hi everyone,
> 
> I was planning on updating sooner and then life happened .... but here I am, with a new chapter. :)
> 
> As always, please pay attention to the trigger warnings.

It’s sometime after Christmas, a week into January, and Sherlock is seated in his mother’s car. Raindrops accumulate and cross on the window, the New Year already heavy with the weight of the ocean. _It’s only January and I’ve had enough._ _I’ve truly had enough. Who’s doing all the work, driving him to school and to appointments?_ His mother is wearing big sunglasses but they don’t hide the wrinkles around her eyes. It just makes them more visible. _We don’t know where it’s coming from. No one in the family has ever been diagnosed with anything and then Sherlock comes along._ _I don’t know what I would have done had I known before. The 9 months I was pregnant with him were the best I ever had._ Underneath his mother’s hands nests a tangle of veins, a criss-cross of blue-green pulsing under brittle skin. When he was small, he used to think that the term “crow feet” meant that you have an actual crow nesting on your face. _And then Sherlock comes along._ A thing with feathers, leaving footprints on skin soft and translucent like snow.

“I don’t really have a brother”, he’s heard Mycroft say last night, on the phone, mumbled and hushed, long after their parents had done their disappearing act and silence had settled like a pause button pressed on the temple. Sherlock dug his teeth into his knees, folding his body away until he’s as small as a comma in a chair. “He’s never said my name.”

 

“Sherlock, come on, we don’t want to be late.”

Sherlock lingers behind, the school’s building looming large. Normally there’d be screaming and fluorescent light and teachers and doors slamming and the bang of lockers and too many faces and _freak’s here_. Now it’s late afternoon and Sherlock can still taste the words, the echoes, can see John’s face, the furrow of his eyebrows when he’s worried but he doesn’t want others to see he’s worried. _Hi Sherlock, this is John._ The echo tastes like old memory.

 

“Alright. Sherlock, how are doing?”

Gradegrind hides behind a stack of books, his hands resting on his well-fed belly, his eyes scanning _test results_ and _expressive language skills_. How are you doing. Sherlock is sitting on his hands, swaying slowly from side to side. _I’m okay I’m okay it’s okay I’m okay_.

“Sherlock?”

The empty seat where John is supposed to sit but isn’t. (John is standing in an OR, watching surgeons attach little lenses to their glasses, thinking how Sherlock would love the lenses but hate the scrubbing.) Instead, the expert - university lecturer who has money to travel and promote his work but still wears hand-me-downs is occupying John’s chair, using up the empty space. Gradegrind’s eyes wander nervously around the room, trying not to think of _changes in routine_ and _meltdowns_.

“Sherlock?”

Sherlock can feel the buzz of his phone like a ticking noise you can hear when you’ve worn a watch for too long. The teeth marks of time imprinted on your bones.

_[11:54]: Hi Sherlock, this is John._

The emails and text messages to John are more frequent now. Sometimes they seem to Sherlock as if they were messages in a bottle; small acts of kindness sent to him across a vast, deep darkness.

 _[11: 58_ ]: _Hope you’re getting some sleep. Sleep-deprivation is unhealthy. Even for you. Especially for you. Don’t make me lecture you._

“Mrs. Holmes, to be honest, I don’t think there’s much we can do in a situation like this –“

[11:59]: _Look what I found on PubMed. I mean, neither my supervisor nor I really know what to do with the publication, but I told (ok, I bragged) him I have this friend who has a doctorate in chemistry and is fiercely smart. Now you’re don’t have your PhD (yet) but the other two things are true, you_ _know it.”_

“He seems to be doing well. I mean, look at his test results, isn’t that something to be proud of? With both your sons doing so well?

_[11:59]: Watching Supernatural right now, Zachariah reminds me of your brother…. in 20 years. How’s Mycroft doing anyway? Already on his way to Stanford Law School?_

“I know. I understand. Completely.”

_Sometimes I get so sad it feels like I’m falling inside myself –_

“We’re all doing our best.”

_There’s a hole in my –_

“And I do think the public discourse is changing. I mean, think about all the autistic characters in books and on TV. Sherlock. Isn’t that awesome?”

A hungry pair of eyes wanders over Sherlock hands muted with words, looking at him like his skin was made of paper, easy to fold up and stack away on shelves, his insides full of words someone else put there.

_I’m okay I’m okay I’m okay_

“So let’s just try and maintain positive, I’d say –“

Sherlock lets his index finger trace patches of carved scar tissue underneath his sweater like he’s reading braille.

_John –_

The older cuts feel like something thorny and knotty has been growing inside of him and is now threatening to come out.

_John, you are my best friend._

“For the future –“

_You are my only friend._

 

 

 


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hi everyone,
> 
> This is a small update -- there's more to come and the plot will pick up. I just wanted to post this as it's been sitting on my computer for ages ..

Sherlock curls up in what used to be Mycroft’s bed, hiding underneath a black duvet. He imagines the conversations his brother would have had if his room was the empty one, if he had never been born or sent away, or if he’d simply turned out differently. _Mycroft, we talked about this._ Sherlock inhales and bites into the soft cushion, his eyes closed so the darkness around him becomes him, is his own, pulsing and breathing and screaming and churning and turning. _But it’s my graduation ceremony. Can’t we leave him with John or with someone else?_

His brother is gone, away at uni, but his room is still his, undeniably. There are stacks of postcards Mycroft has secretly been hording, hidden in some secret corner underneath the mattress like one might hide a porn stash from over-vigilant parents. Sherlock lets his fingers glide over glossy images of beaches and towns photoshoped into oblivion. There haven’t been many family holidays to speak of during the last years, and on the one they had there were no postcards to be written, their family life so circumscribed the five inches worth of stiff cardboard wouldn’t have been a reduction but a magnifying glass. _Family holiday? What family holiday? Do you remember the one where we took him to the North Sea and our house reeked of horse and dead fish the entire week?_

Sherlock traces the edges of the paper, the smooth paper on his fingertips, a memory pressed against a memory. _The roar of the ocean and you are full of noise and power and the sea-coloured sky hanging above your head like an affirmation, a promise. (The story is in the soil, keep your ear to the ground.)_ Memories on a wall, lined up, colours bleeding into each other. _The tide is way out and the ground is surprisingly uneven, wave patterns imprinted in the mud like crumpled sheets after a horrible night’s sleep where you toss and turn until you fall asleep like you fall from something large and sheer, the ocean revealing what’s been at its bottom all along: a great, wordless distance._


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hey everyone,
> 
> As promised, a new update! Happy reading.

“John, good to see you again--- ”

The September air is thick and sweet, like syrup melting in hot milk, and John can feel a headache setting in. All around him there’s the clamour and clatter of holidays spent at home, at your grandparents’, in a country you can’t pronounce, working a summer job, doing nothing. What have I been doing? Hospital, mainly. No, not as a patient. _Of course not._

“John, you should go out more. Spending so much time with sick people is detrimental to your health,” Sally lectures, waiving her fork with overcooked pasta in front of his face like he’s a disobedient child that needs to be disciplined. Her skin is radiant with that specific glow only a long vacation (Italy? France?) brings. Sometimes John envies her easy intimacy with the world, of never having to worry about money, references, or grades. Of not having to endure 6 weeks of work experience at the next big university teaching hospital and working extra shifts at the grocery store so you can afford the bus fare.

“Besides, I don’t think there’s anything you haven’t learned or seen yet? You’ll get your offer to go to med school anyway, I don’t even know what your problem is---“

And off she goes, talking more to herself than to anyone, about John’s grades and scholarships like he’s already won a secure future for himself. _You’re having it easy, John. You don’t know how lucky you are with your grades._

“I mean I don’t get it---“

Me neither, John finds himself thinking as his minds struggles to make sense of the past weeks. His work experience should have consisted of him rotating from ward to ward, even though he stayed on the ward for haematology ward the longest, watching patients sitting stoically on their beds waiting for their blood to clot or stop clotting, some dragging IV poles behind them like luggage. “Your medication is so expensive we might as well inject the money directly into your bloodstream,” he’s overheard one resident telling a patient, announcing the price of artifical factor VII as if the patient’s life was up for auction. _In emergency situations inject 15-30_ _μg/kg of recombinant factor VIIa every 2-3 hours or factor VII concentrate 25-50 IE/kg. Cave: highly variable_ _hemorrhagic predisposition_. We might as well inject the money directly into your bloodstream.

 Haemophilia is a question without an answer …

 He’s watched patients bargain with their blood. _Deep vein thrombosis prophylaxis_ and _ischemic_ _s_ _troke_ _in_ _children/young adults_ and _please don’t give me a stroke I’m still young._ He’s sat next to med students typing up doctor’s notes, crushing a life under the weight of numbers and letters. _Factor VII deficiency (Cys135arg). Factor V Leiden mutation (G1691A)._

 The crying at night a language we all speak.

 John sighs and unconsciously grabs his right leg, the mind morphing itself into a palpable shape, translating time into muscle spasms. His body holding its breath and counting, stuttering. One, two, three…

_Great. Now you’re imagining symptoms._

“John, come on. Take some time off. You’re not even in med school yet … how about a movie night, all of us together?”

Greg, John’s new lab partner, slumps right next to John, the usual doughnut and coffee in his hand.

“I think I could bring Sherlock along…” John mutters, trying to suggest the (as he perceived it) one missing bit to their circle of friends without setting Sally off, her disdain and disapproval of “the big baby and his special brain” (as she liked to call Sherlock, knowing it would keep him quiet and withdrawn for the rest of the day).

“Yeah, why not,” Greg munches, doughnut waving silently to signal his agreement. “The more the merrier. Is he on facebook?”

Sally breaks out in a fit of giggles. “You haven’t met John’s _mentee_ yet, have you?”

“He’s not my mentee,” John shoots back. _He’s my friend,_ he thinks as if he needs to silently edit every bit of conversation they’re having about Sherlock, a counter image to what’s been circulating through the grapevine of snickering students, of Sherlock rubbing his palms through his hair (what is he doing), fingers tapping out walls (why isn’t he talking) and tracing the wallpaper’s bumpy pattern (freak). _He’s my friend._

“So you’re his mentor? What are you mentoring him for?” Greg, doughnut finished, turns to John. “I’ve never heard of a mentoring program. You apply for it and then, what? Get a mentor?”

“ _And_ extra-time on your test,” Sally snaps. “But only if you’re qualified for it.”

“Qualified for it? What, you need to be qualified to take more time than usual?”

“You need to be disabled,” John murmurs, lowering his voice as if pitch alone could transform the word, making it sound less apocalyptic.

Greg’s eyes widen. “… oh.” Silence sets in, heavy and dark. For some reason John’s finding the absence of words hardest to navigate, worse than the staring and talking and whispering and giggling and snickering. Worse than staring. He doesn’t tell them that he visited Sherlock over the summer, on his days off, mornings off, evenings off (time is rationed in hospitals). How he visited Sherlock and the silence in the house struck him, along with the many pictures of Mycroft (as a kindergartener, on the first day of school, at his graduation ceremony. It looked like Mycroft was born that way, hair and suit and all) and fewer of Sherlock ( _born that way_ , too). How Sherlock traced each wall with his index finger. Marks on the wallpaper like thoughts scraped bare on asphalt.

“So he’s in wheelchair…?”

_The color of memory is bruise-blue._

“Sherlock? No,” Sally continues, giggling, “he’s …. _special_ ,” mimicking Sherlock’s way of holding himself, his body rigid angles like he can make the world around him more predictable if he folds it into shapes and sizes he can navigate, manage. John’s throat burns. “Sally. SHUT UP---“

_It’s so nice to see you John. Good to see you’re taking your responsibilities as a mentor seriously. Sherlock, what do you say. No. I want none of that. Use your words._

“Come on, John. It’s just a joke. You look like you could use a little humor.”

“Speaking of which, have you heard …” And off they go, sharing their jokes and stories in that tricky language called friendship. A conversation fueled by intimacy. John wonders where his friendship with Sherlock fits in, if anything. Conversations carried out in texting and tapping and _I think I can feel the entire world underneath my fingers_.

_One can break the silence, but_

_make it,_

_whole?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. The lines "Haemophilia is a question without an answer" and "one can break the silence..." are borrowed from Tom Andrews' memoir "Codeine Diary" and his poem "Language of Hemophilia." I highly recommend his writing. His poems are a joy to read.
> 
> 2\. I didn't make the hemophilia stuff up. I was born with factor vii deficiency and factor v Leiden mutation. John would find it pretty interesting. :-)
> 
> 3\. Now that I've written my final paper for uni I have the summer off and will work on updating this little story more frequently. It means a lot to me to have so many enthusiastic readers! Thank you so much for reading.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hello!
> 
> So this basically exploded out of me...
> 
> I'm going to put this behind a BIG trigger warning for trauma, abuse, and self-harm. Please be careful. If these things make you feel unsafe, don't read.

_Trauma is memory spelled backwards_

There's a joy in repeating phrases over and over, of wrapping yourself in a a blanket of words. Words words words, round, solid and warm to the touch, like loose change slipping through a hole in your pocket. _Sherlock,_ _I’m your friend._ Hope the size of a hazelnut.

There's a joy and then there's 

_backwards, backwards, backwards._

Sherlock roams the house like a family ghost. It’s 6:15 PM and he's pacing in the kitchen, tripping over syllables and his own feet.

_Trauma is silence calcified into stone_

With the familiar soundscape of footsteps, the syncopated presence of his mother’s staccato, hectic clatter and the drone of his father and his brother gone, he's finding it increasingly difficult to locate his body in space. The absence of sound makes him nervous, the kind of pulling feeling you get when you’re riding a roller coaster and you’re going nowhere fast.

_Trauma is stuffed emptiness, the images leaky and sour, dripping and dribbling_

Food tastes like dirt these days so he throws both his pills and his dinner away. In the weeks leading to his brother’s departure to uni it was Mycroft’s duty to watch over him, assigned by his parents who would remind him in a sharp whisper they thought Sherlock couldn’t hear that they're paying for his tuition fees and his en-suite bedroom and his textbooks so they really shouldn’t have to ask in the first place and besides, this is _your brother_ , Mycroft. “Yeah, this is my brother, lucky me,” Mycroft mumbles, setting a bowl of soup in front of Sherlock and rolling his eyes as his little brother turns white as a sheet.

“Bloody hell Sherlock, it’s just soup, hurry up!”

Unbeknown to Mycroft, it’s not _just_ _soup_ , it’s images glued together with broken glass and it’s ---

_Hurry up hurry up hurry up_

As soon as the overcooked tomatoes and slimy onions hit him it comes back up, the long hours of feeding therapy he underwent when we was too small to understand cruelty and it’s back and they’re back, voices shouting at him, the sting of tears and soup burning hot on his hands and he’s chocking on the images and _it’s too much too fast too much too fast too much too fast too much_ …

A sharp _slap_ and he’s back, still standing in the kitchen, with no Mycroft in sight. _It’s okay it’s okay it’s okay_ he tries to reassure himself, hands flapping violently but he can’t feel the words inside him, they’re empty containers rattling against his bones ---

_Trauma is fear spreading inside you like a vast emptiness_

He recognizes the stained teacup but not the hand holding it. He’s still pacing but the ground keeps shifting with a deep rumble, like tectonic plates.

_Bloody hell Sherlock_

He stumbles blindly to the kettle

it’s coming and it’s coming fast ---

_Trauma is saying “I hate myself” when you mean “I don’t understand”_

_and it’s believing in the first but not the in the latter --_

Sherlock’s screams echo in the house like shadows calling each other in unknown tongues as he pours boiling water all over him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the record: I don't like soup either.


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hello! 
> 
> This is basically just a small sketch I wanted to post, set in a hospital after the incident. 
> 
> Thank you so much for reading!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PS: Yes, there's a line from Supernatural in it. I couldn't resist Crowley ;).

These were the words you borrow underneath pine trees. Stories you unearth from a tree, with roots knotty and thorny and half-hidden. Roots you can’t see when you’re out for a walk in the forest and everything around you is a dark rich green, pulsing and vibrating, until you trip and stumble and a second later your face is buried in the sand, in black soil, and you’re inhaling a different kind of darkness, a different kind of silence.

 

Silence like water in your ear.

 

_Something happened to Sherlock. I don’t know, John. My parents wouldn’t say anything. We don’t know. He’s at the hospital._

 

Mycroft sounded small, worry and fear making his voice thick and heavy, transforming the usual arrogance into something different, something raw, something that was hidden under layers and layers of tradition and family and representation and now it’s sniffed the air for the first time, lungs raw and burning.

 

_I don’t know, John._

 

Words travelling under mountains, over cities, across electric wires, turning your thoughts into a slosh, a mush of colors and images and hospital hours _and we don’t know, John ---_

 

Thinking like breathing underwater.

 

Sherlock looks like he’s been colored in red felt tip, his body all sharp angles, like in a children’s painting. The shock of red, angry injuries against eggshell walls. John half-expects Sherlock to get up and join his paper family in front of a paper house, with a paper sun shining down on them.

 

_Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall_

_Humpty Dumpty had a great fall_

 

John stands next to the bed, while Sherlock doesn’t acknowledge his presence in any way, eyelids fluttering like bird’s wings. Noise mumbling blindly, bringing back memories of childhood accidents, of days spent in the hospital, bruises covered in bright plasters. Teddy bears smiling sardonically at battered knees.

 

_All the king’s horses and the king’s men_

_Couldn’t put Humpty together again._

 

Sherlock’s skin looks like it’s been shed, like something had torn his body into pieces.

 

 _Hell hounds._ _I brought my own._

 

Words running down the window like rain.

 

 _Sherlock,_ _I’m so sorry. Sherlock, what have you done. You should’ve told me. Sherlock. Sherlock. Sherlock._

 

John folds himself in the plastic chair, knees drawn to his chin (even though he knows his leg will hate him for it.) Nurses and doctors pass by. Heads and bodies without proportions, just vast masses of darkness swashing by. _Vital signs, IV poles, pain medication._ _Scarring. Skin grafting._ The clinical jargon numbs him in all the wrong places.

 

Words like misfiring neurons, like earthquakes.

 

The world rumbles,

 

turns around on its back.

 

_It’s going to be alright, Sherlock._

_It’s going to be okay._

And the space turns as quiet and as still as a church, with windows so big and stained it’s not shadows that are passing through, but colored light.


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hey everyone,
> 
> As promised, a new update! So this is basically just a small sketch I've come up with to explore Mycroft's experience at law school a bit more.
> 
> Trigger warning for slurs and ableism.

Collect your thoughts in a glass jar. Hear your bones rattle against the cold, reflective surface.

 “Traditions define us.”

And instead of being glued to a brain that stutters and stumbles forward with each memory, each molecule throbbing off color you glue yourself to tradition, to shiny images, to tables so dark and polished you can see your own face reflected in the current. Feel your body being lifted into dark waters, your legs kicking at the constant stream of thoughts, the sea of faces in your head.

“Total silence is traditional.”

Mycroft shifts in his seat as he tries to concentrate on _Philosophy of the Law -- Law of the Philosophy_ , a lecture mandatory for every first year law student and, to make things even worse, taught by a professor who looked like Professor Binns straight out of the _Harry Potter_ books. Huffing and puffing like a kettle about to overboil.

“And the law, what does the law say--“ (huff puff)

Tradition is memory stitched back up, seams coming apart.

“What an idiot…”

A mumbled voice next to Mycroft’s ear. With a face attached to it. Pale, the type willing to pull three all-nighters in a row and not complain. Not even brag.

You have to understand the law, the teakettle drones on. Have a feeling for it. It doesn't look like the guy next to Mycroft seemed to understand or feel it (or anything, for that matter). Instead, it looked like he was born into it. Into the prestige, the anonymity. Mycroft sinks deeper into his seat, folding his arms, hiding his thumbs inside the sleeves of his button-down shirt. Here’s another kind of anonymity. Here’s protection.

“Man, he’s even worse than my flatmate…”

“Your flatmate?”

“Studies maths. He’s like a human calculator with the social IQ of a rock…”

“Autistic moron…”

Mycroft feels something break inside him.

“I’m telling you man he _is_ autistic, all maths geeks are…”

…

“So what you’ve been doing over the summer?”

“Not much, stayed home, helped my parents,” was the standard answer and a rather good one, as it seemed to please whoever was asking (flatmates, whoever is sitting next to you in a lecture, that person you met at a housewarming party and now you can’t remember her face because nothing sticks in your mind, not even images, it all goes through like sand running through a sieve). _Mycroft, you’re always so serious._ Here’s such anonymity. Here’s such protection.

He sometimes wanted to add, “I watched my brother cry and scream for hours,” because that’s what he’d been doing, day in and day out, counting off the hours, minutes, seconds. “No, he isn’t throwing tantrums like a five year old,” he would continue the conversation, “he’s autistic,” and he could feel the old anger inside him, at those words, at other people being granted the bliss of ignorance but never him, how they never had to watch their little brother smash his head because of a bowl of soup or a plate of spaghetti, how they never had to count the seconds like he had to as he pinned Sherlock’s body to the ground, his crying sounding like a broken bird.

…

A broken family writes itself into your body like a string of broken DNA. Broken chromosomes wrapped around your spine like duck tape. Tradition is stitching time back up. Rewind it until the tape comes loose.

 

_“Mycroft, something happened to Sherlock --- “_

_“We don’t know ---“_

_“Hospital ---“_

_“Surgery ---“_

 

Breathe down the telephone like you’re underwater. Feel your body being lifted into dark waters.

 


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hi everyone,
> 
> Another small update. Still set in the hospital.
> 
> Trigger warnings apply.
> 
> Thank you for reading and keeping Sherlock company.

Hospital time is time distilled, conserved, muted down. Lungs heavy with silence.

A mind like a coat buttoned all wrong.

“Hello Sherlock…”

A cheery blonde nurse comes in. You can tell by the wrinkles (around her mouth, not her eyes) that her cheeriness is real. Not a façade, not like the show other nurses put on, laughter all hollow and empty, like the laughing rack of a sitcom.

“Don’t worry, I’m just going to take your blood pressure. This is going to take a minute.”

Her nametag says “Mrs. Hudson.”

The blood pressure machine beeps. Warm fingertips on his upper arm. Sherlock can feel his body tensing up, his eyelid fluttering, stuttering --

_I shut my eyes and the world drops dead._

“Oh dear…”

_I think I made you up inside my head._

…

“He should have gotten stitches, look at the scar tissue on his arms…”

“Has he been diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder?”

“No, the chart says Autism Spectrum…”

“Looks like someone needs a psychiatric evaluation.”

“I know, I called psych -- ”

“Then why is the crazy kid still on my ward?”

“They don’t have a bed for him. ”

“So they ditched him back to us? I’m a surgeon not a social worker god damn it!”

“They said they really don’t have bed for him---”

“Refer him again, I want him out of here by 12.”

 

….

“What?! Who referred him?”

“Dr. S. from surgery. ”

“We don’t have any experience with autistic teenagers.”

“That’s what I told him but…”

“Let me guess, the great diagnostician Dr. S. doesn’t want him on his ward.”

“Pretty much. The intern said something about BPD.”

“This is ridiculous. The kid’s not even 18 yet.”

“Well we still could...”

“ _We_ can’t do anything. We don’t have a bed.”

“Dr. S. will murder his intern if I refer him back. The poor guy almost cried when I said no.”

“RIGHT. Here’s what we’re going to do. Call the parents. Crisis talk, usual procedure. Talk them through group homes. I’ll evaluate the kid.”

“Will do…”

“Where is he, by the way?”

“Who?”

“Our problem patient.”

“Oh, Berry put him on observation. Was concerned about safety.”

“Thanks.”

 

…

_The glassy light was a clear wall.  
_

_The thickets quiet._

 Words running down the window like snowflakes melting into slush, the kind of mud that just sticks about everywhere. You can feel the slimy substance trickling in, slowly, like an MRI contrast agent, exposing gaping holes inside a vast, grey emptiness. Black and white and grey and “why do you think you’re here, Sherlock?”

_There’s a hole running through the centre of my stomach._

“How does that make you feel?”

Black and white and grey. Colors sloshing inside, colliding, creating little sparks, like the very air around you is electric. It’s not just your brain that’s out of whack.

“Sherlock. SHERLOCK.”

The air is so thick you can see your own breath. Syllables hang in the air like cobweb.

  _I shut my eyes and the world drops dead._

“….”

_I think I made you up inside my head._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So just to be clear, I don't want to demonize doctors/surgeons. However, I've had more than my fair shaire of prejudice and discrimination coming from the medical profession and I wanted to put that to bed here. 
> 
> The lines "I shut my eyes and world drops dead. / I think I made you up inside my head" and "the glassy light was a clear wall /the thickets quiet" are from Sylvia Plath's Poems "Mad Girl's Love Song" and "The Rabbit Catcher."
> 
> The line "Theres a hole running through the centre of my stomach" is from Simon Stephens' play "Sea Wall." I had a conversation about sea wall with a friend the other day and it brought all the feelings back. So I had to put that in. You should all watch Andrew Scott's performance of the play. It's beautiful. 
> 
> Also, there's a small reference to seizures/epilepsy if you squint your eyes hard enough. Bit of an uphill struggle for me right now, which is why the updates are so short, intermittent, and fragmented. I just didn't want to abandon this story and I'm writing exactly how I'm feeling so that's why.


	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hi everyone,
> 
> A small update! 
> 
> Happy reading.

His mother’s laughter is loud and artificial. Sherlock leans his body against the wall, flexing and unflexing his fingers in the pockets of his coat. _Quiet hands._ Fear is a metronome. A steady rhythm, like breathing, only underwater. Lungs filling up with silence, and something else.

 

The house looks like one of the lego toy houses he and Mycroft got for Christmas decades ago. Complete with plastic trees, a plastic swimming pool, a plastic kitchen, and a plastic family. Smiles static and fake but fabricated so well you can't tell. The little people just seemed to live in an eternal state of bliss and oblivion, clearly not bothered by a house with edges so sharp you’ll cut your finger and bleed all over the place if you take a wrong step.

 

More tests. Sherlock is prodded and poked, assessed and referred. Feel foreign words crawling on your skin, sinking in. Lungs filling up with silence and something else. Something red, raw. Breathing turns into whistling, into humming. A steady rhythm, much like fear.

 

Silence is dissociation. Watch everything grind to a halt. Like someone unplugs you and leaves you with a deafening roar of silence inside, a roar that grows and duplicates, mutates.

 

Dr. S. looms large. Fingertips covered in medical gloves. Smooth indifference. Scar tissue all red and angry. His wounds are weeping. Leaking, like an oil spill. Poisonous liquid, like it’s not even blood that’s being pumped through his body, but dark soil, the kind that goes straight to your head. To the woods growing there. _If you torch a forest it grows right back._

 

A speech pathologist for the tube of this throat. (Someone claims to be a speech pathologist and yet there are words flowing freely from her mouth.) Peering inside, dissecting. Vivisecting.

 

Pathology: the study of disease.

 

 _Born this way_ and you carry your self: a head full of mismatched images, a pocket of numbers and letters, a bag of unruly nerve cells. Limbs all speaking unknown tongues. Misfiring. Mixed up, shaken up. Autosomal recessive: two copies of the abnormal gene must be present. _I am. I am._

 

“As a result of your son’s assessment, we would recommend an AAC device as a strategy for intervention…”

 

Sherlock keeps his eyes on the floor. His palms tingle, telling him he’s been sitting on them for too long. Reassuring pressure of a silence he’s used to, heavy, scratchy and always too close, like his coat. Nothing but warm flesh wrapped in Wool. Protected by wool.

 

The light is too loud. More tingling, like pins and needles. All over his brain, this time.

 

Intervention: the action of intervening, stepping in, or interfering in any affair.

 

A wrong step and you’ll bleed all over the place.

 

_Quiet hands._

He wearily eyes the bulky computer that’s been set on a table in front of him. Smiley faces. Stick figures. Glass surface, smooth and cool to the touch. A hollow cavity opens up, between the images rotating in his mind, his throat, where things get stuck and jumble, and the figure grinning back at him, beady eyes black and empty. _I am._

 

The speech pathologist is all bright smiles, plastered on, and Sherlock can sense her sickening perfume before she presses his index finger on one of the symbols. A robotic blare, scratchy and monotone, fills the room. _I am. I am._ Dissonance hurts.

 

_I am.  
_

 

Sherlock imagines shoving a whole bunch of pictograms into her face like slamming a door shut. _Yes, thank you for your input._

 

…

 

Social skills group. Sherlock folds himself on a chair, tablet in his lap. The person overseeing the group introduces herself as a therapist, not a pathologist. He can feel her eyes all over his hands. 

 

Therapy: the medical treatment of disease; curative medical or psychiatric treatment.

 

Curative: the healing of wounds.

 

“My name is Sherlock,” he types, and his tablet spits out his name, making the consonants crunch in curious places. It doesn’t even sound like Sherlock, more like Shylock. Shakespearean. _Words words words_ glued to glassy surfaces. A white screen forever reflecting, glaring. S-H-E-R-L-O-C-K. Difficult to spell. Struggle all the way to the end.

 

“So today we’re going to focus on social networking!”

 

 _Words words words_ , empty containers, rattling, entirely devoid of meaning. The therapist’s voice an impossibly high-pitched squeak, like a guinea pig on cocaine. Sherlock scrolls through the pictograms. There’s a guinea pig there but it looks more like an obese hamster.

 

“Sherlock, I’m going to pair you with Victor.”

 

Conversation. Sherlock picks at the frame of his tablet. A pair of curious eyes all over him. The white glare in his lap. A great wordless distance.

 

“Hi, Sherlock.”

 

A voice attached to a mouth attached to the bony snap of fingers.

 

He lifts his head slowly. Thoughts hanging by a thin thread, like a wind chime. Tubes of wood whistling, whispering.

 

A voice attached to a mouth attached to a face. A whirl of blue and brown.

 

“My name is Victor Trevor.”

 

Hand on your chest. Tap of your index and middle finger. “V-I-C-T-O-R,” he finger spells. And then, “S-H-E-R-L-O-C-K.”

 

Words swirl through the air, crunchy like yellow autumn leaves. Specks of color against the dark ground.


	16. Chapter 16

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hey everyone,
> 
> Another little update!
> 
> As always, happy reading, and a big THANK YOU to everyone who commented, left kudos etc. It means the world to me.

Sherlock stares at his hands. Knuckles turning white. Limbs all gluey, tangled up. His memory has changed: his mind is losing its feathers. Moulting, exposing. The wound plaster underneath his scarf itches. A constant gnawing at the bone. At night he dreams about shedding his skin. Images the consistency of diluted ink.

 

Remembering has many layers now. You have to rely on your hands. (The one part of you that doesn’t feel broken and yet keeps breaking.) Your fingers and your eyes have to remember remember remember. (Memory is like a fingerprint: all your own. Stays with you for the rest of your life.)

 

Like a fingerprint. Smudge the lines, watch it blur. The world is kinder that way.

 

So many layers.

 

Getting a coffee turns into an act of war.

 

“What can I get you?”

 

Layers upon layers. Sherlock pecks slowly at the letters on his tablet like he’s wading through quicksand.The tug of the current at his legs. 

 

“A coffee, please.”

 

Whispers turn into stares turn into _what's taking him so long_ until ---

 

Oh.

 

_He’s one of those savant types? Yeah, I’ve seen them on TV, like Stephen Hawking --_

 

(I’m not a TV screen)

 

(And you’re no Stephen Hawking)

 

_Is he okay?_

 

(I’m not an accident waiting to happen)

 

“There you go. Black, two sugars.”

 

(I don’t want to be _just okay_.)

 

 “Thanks.”

 

(I want to feel safe.)

 

 


	17. Chapter 17

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Heya everyone,
> 
> Another update, this time a bit longer. Enjoy!
> 
> Warning: I'm going to put this behind a trigger warning for mention of abortion and filicide. If these things make you feel unsafe, don't read.

“Sherlock is home from hospital and we’re all very happy!”

 

Lines delivered like a dramatic monologue -- all fiction, but if you keep saying it long enough, and confidently enough, you’ll eventually believe it. Willing suspension of disbelief. All fiction is detective fiction (if you keep looking for it).

_Am I happy too? I haven’t checked._

“That’s great news. And I must say, he looks so much better than the last time I’ve seen him!”

 

His mother is rushing through the kitchen like dinner is a race that needs to be won, while his aunt and her younger son stare at Sherlock like he’s the newest addition to the family’s aquarium.

 

_Lungs filling up with silence, and something else._

 

The smile on his aunt’s face is entirely misplaced, like someone’s made a collage and forgot to smooth out the edges. You can see the lines of her mouth, the wrinkly corners around her eyes. Pity the glue that keeps it all in place.

 

(To be disabled means to have access to other people’s fears.)

 

“Why doesn’t Sherlock talk like the rest of us?”

 

A child’s unapologetic honesty. Sherlock glances at his cousin, feeling like he’s eight years old again. What once looked like the long leap from “I don’t understand” to “I hate myself” feels shorter now. Smooth. Almost convenient.

 

“….”

 

“Shush. Now don’t look. That’s not nice.”

 

“Is he special?”

 

 _Special._ Schoolyard teasing. Words filling gaps. Building bridges out of wood, the kind that just never rots.

 

_Special._

 

The half-life of memory is measured in images repeating themselves until there’s nothing left.

 

_Is he special or something._

 

(Trauma means you see cracks in yourself and in the world around you)

 

“…”

 

(You’re missing pieces of yourself,)

 

(Be careful what you replace them with.)

 

“But it’s really amazing what you can do with technology nowadays! We got Mikey a tablet for uni as well and he’s really happy with it.”

_This is my brother, lucky me_

 

“Oh don’t worry, he just sometimes needs a little more prompting, that’s all…”

 

His mother’s fingers move blindly over glass.

 

_“Hello. My name is Sherlock. How are you.”_

 

Words all dissonant and wrong. Feel the shame of _special_ running down your spine like lava.

 

“That’s really great! Good job, Sherlock!”

 

 _Good job_ and you flinch like a dog that’s been kicked too many times.

 

…

 

“Yes, we’re really proud of Mycroft. The past few weeks haven’t been easy but Mikey really knows how important it is to hold a family together.”

 

Shame the glue that keeps it all in place.

 

“I don’t think it’s a legal issue. It’s a personal decision. I wouldn’t want a child with a disability. I would abort it.”

 

Statements delivered like one liners, pure and simple. Except they’re not. Fingernails dig into palms all hot and sticky. His study desk is covered in scrapes and cuts and Mycroft, out of instinct, places his hand over the splintering wood _. Here’s protection._

 

“I would abort it.”

 

(To have access to other people’s fears means to see yourself in a mirror, dark and distorted)

“No, it’s true. My neighbours have a child with autism. Tough luck.”

 

“Haha, no. Not the good kind. The bad kind. Screaming his head off every night, biting himself and stuff.”

 

_Autism. It felt like he died._

 

(Parent wishing you dead. You believing you already are. Cotard delusion in reverse.)

 

“I think they should have aborted it. “

 

(Survival is knowing

That your life

Is still a life.)

 

“They said they couldn’t find the gene for it. Probably a fluke of nature.”

 

_Twins come twice once in a blue moon._

 

“Mycroft, you’ve haven’t said anything yet. What do you think?”

 

…

 

Days are split now. Half of the day Sherlock goes to school. Sitting through lessons, watching his tablet’s voice bounce off the classroom walls. Consonants fly through the air, hit the windows like rocks. Crack the glass open like frostbitten skin.

 

The other half of the day is devoted to “social skills training” and “life skills.” Shiny labels dug up by therapists, reflected in smirks and smiles. _Special._

 

(Survival is scratching out a living with your bare hands

Carve it out of the woods,

Hammer it into your bones.)

 

“Rache. German for revenge.”

 

Anderson’s voice all smooth and glib. Syllables dripping with _at least I don’t sound like a humanoid_. Sarcasm the consistency of stomach acid. Burning holes where no one will see them.

 

“Sherlock. How about the next sentence. Give it a try.”

_Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen._

 

There is raw beauty in Mahler. Words like pebbles thrown across a great distance. _I have become lost to the world_. Leaving ripples inside yourself. Wave upon wave upon wave upon wave.

 

 _Ich._ Pointy gesture at himself, at his chest. _I._ Bony cavity _. I am large. I contain multitudes_. Wave upon wave upon wave.

 

“Sherlock.”

 

John tugging at his sleeve. Furrowed brow a familiar greeting.

 

 _John you look like a hedgehog when you’re worried_ , his fingers are spelling but there’s German to digest, words to be pulled apart. Dull. Sherlock rolls his eyes silently (you can’t do that with an AAC device).

 

 _Stille._ Silence. Difficult to pronounce, and deceiving -- it may look like “/st/” but it’s actually pronounced as “/sch/,” as in _Schnee_. /Sch./ A silence filling you up, one that doesn’t hurt, one that isn’t white and achey.

 

_There's a sudden joy that's like a fish, a moving light._

 

(My silence isn’t absence.)

 

“Stille - Silence.”

 

(Survival is scratching out a living

And holding it next to,

Not against your mind.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. As you may have noticed, there are two lines from NBC's Hannibal (2x02) in there: "You're missing pieces of yourself, be careful what you replace them with." I wasn't planning to write Hannibal into this story but I'm rewatching the show, the lines got stuck in my head, and remixing/scripting is by far the most natural form of communication for me so that's how Hannibal ended up in my story. 
> 
> 2\. Speaking of remixing and scripting, "Twins come twice once in a blue moon" is a line from Watsky's "Two Blue Moons." Whenever I think of Mycroft and Sherlock I think of this song. You chould check it out, Watsky is amazing! (and so is the Innocence Mission!)
> 
> 3\. Also Walt Whitman because WHY NOT.
> 
> 4\. I haven't written the German in to make the story more poetic or whatnot. There's German in it because I'm a native speaker so it always feels close. Plus, I like the idea of Sherlock rolling his eyes at Anderson during German at school and I couldn't resist. :)


	18. Chapter 18

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hey everyone,
> 
> A new update, a bit longer this time. Happy reading. :)

A doctor, a different one, this time. Recommended by Dr. S. -- Sherlock could hear the hushed conversations his parents had. How he urged to refer Sherlock to a new psychiatrist, “a pal from med school.”

 

A pal.

 

“Good evening, Mr. Holmes. Sherlock. Please come in.”

 

A voice round and smooth, stringing words together like marbles. An accent making the vowels and consonants clash and cling. Not unlike his tablet’s voice crushing words, not so dissimilar, but different in all the ways it mattered.

 

A face without crinkles, smooth. A pair of beady eyes. A doctor that doesn’t look like a doctor. Impeccably dressed. Suit and tie and _here’s anonymity. Here’s protection._ Of a different kind.

 

An office that doesn’t look like an office. No loud lights, no flickering voices. Instead, Bach's Goldberg Variations in the background. Glenn Gould’s idiosyncratic intonation, his soft humming. The music so very much his own.

 

A space vast and incomprehensible, like the sea.

 

Knuckles bruised and bloody. Sherlock can feel his body in the office, and it doesn’t feel wrong. For the first time he doesn’t feel like photo paper dropped in water. Fear of drowning weighing him down while everyone else watches, expecting his trashing body to bloom.

 

Adapt, evolve, become.

 

Someone takes his hands and places them into a basin. _Hands in my pockets, hands on the floor._ Blood turning everything a crimson red. _The only thing holding me back is me._ His mind is losing its feathers, and they’re black. Like a raven’s.

 

His father’s apologetic murmur. Sherlock lets himself slip but the words have ripped holes into his body, like fishing rods hooked into his skin, pulling him out of the current, into the open. Have him gasp for air. Hurting worse than the wall he used to banged his head [S _o sorry to interrupt. There was an incident at the day care center and we were referred by Dr. S---],_ the concrete a more reliable feedback loop than his own mind and certainly more reliable than the world he sees around himself, cracks like holes, gaping wide [severe _behavioral challenges during speech therapy]_ there’s concrete and there are his hands, hitting buttons, making the glass crack with the weight of “stay away from me” and “no” [ _and we don’t know what to do]_ … … … _[we just don’t know what to do.]_

 

A crepe bandage around his hand. Layers of tissue against damaged skin. He is protected as much as he is broken.

 

_Hands in my pockets, hands on the floor. Hands in my pockets, hands on the floor, hands on the floor, hands on the floor._

 

“Don’t go inside, Sherlock. Stay with me.”

 

A voice pulling him up. Breathing becomes easier again.

 

Hannibal gestures for Sherlock’s dad to leave the office. Words scatter across the wooden floor. “Please, let me talk to your son alone.”

 

“But ---“

 

“I trust Sherlock to speak for himself.”

 

…

 

“Broken.”

 

There are too many layers between moth and mind so Sherlock retorts to his hands. Copying the signs victor has been teaching him. Replicate the word, but not the feeling. _You’re not broken, Sherlock_. Broken. Hands moving like they're breaking a stick in two. The snap reveberating inside his bones. Sound waves are waves, after all.

 

“Broken.”

 

Hannibal echoeing his words. Echolalia: the constant murmur of waves that have seen it all, know it all.

 

“Fear no more, says the heart, committing its burden to some sea…”

 

“Virginia Woolf. You really have a taste for words, Sherlock.”

 

A taste. A hunger. Ravenous. Raven-ous.

 

Hannibal half-smiles.

 

“Occasionally, I drop a teacup to shatter on the floor.

On purpose.”

 

_I lit a fire when I was burnt out_

 

“I'm not satisfied when it doesn't gather itself up again.”

_I learned to swim as I was drowning_

 

“Someday perhaps, a cup will come together.”

_If you torch a forest, it grows right back._

 …

 

To be disabled means that the difference between _to see_ and _be seen_ couldn’t be bigger. A crack that runs through you, gaping wide.

 

Bits of conversations flood through his mind and Sherlock finds himself mouthing phrases. Tasting them like a spicy dish. A teaspoon full of words and your entire mouth burns. Eyes water. Conditioned like Pavlov’s dog, in all the wrong places. Where it hurts the most.

 

“Sherlock is having it so easy. I wouldn’t mind skipping school just to go to therapy.”

 

_Therapy. Having it so easy._

 

I’d rather sit through boring lessons at school than be restrained for flapping my hands … but we all have different priorities.

 

“And then his computer. It’s unfair. We’re not allowed phone and tablets either. He isn’t even talking, he’s just typing and he sounds like a r-o-b-o-t.”

 

 _Isn’t even talking, just typing. Typing typing typing_.

 

Too many layers between mouth and mind. Your brain wrapped in papery images like a cocoon. Crimson seeping through. Like a moth. Moulting. Mouthing. Echolalia is echolocation. Words that make the ground underneath your feet murmur with the weight of a thousand waves.

 

…

 

“John, we’re staying at my place tonight. My parents are out of town _._ ” Sherlock could feel John’s body tensing up, could sense his “no” before John said “maybe.” Could feel the “no” in Selly’s glance, directed at him. Eyes pretending not to see. Looking right through him. _We don’t want Sherlock to come._

 

(Trauma is seeing so many cracks that your absence becomes presence, filling you up with the deafening roar of your own thoughts. Your own nothingness.)

 

“It’s going to be great. I’ve been looking forward to this all week. All of us together.”

 

_Every view is peripheral now. I cannot see or I see too much._

 

Your neurology projected on your body like photographs on an old slide projector. For everybody to watch. Always flickering, always unreliable.

 

_See? See?_

 

Quick looks in your direction. There’s pity in their eyes and they are throwing it into your lap, dried and stale, like the bread people use to feed ducks with.

 

_I close my eyes and all the world drops dead.._

 

Waking up to the sound of people giggling. Anderson doing his best expression of you during an absence seizure. Eyes rolling, mouth slack.

 

(Scratching out a living with your bare hands makes the skin crack in places where it won’t heal.)

 

The giggling not so different from the staring but oh so different from John not leaving his side.

 

(Survival is allowing yourself to be held)

 

(When you can’t hold yourself)

…

 

In the office, again. An office that doesn’t look like an office. Not like the hospital’s ugly block of cement where kindness is made disposable, handed out in tiny plastic cups when you’ve got a headache and you’re begging for aspirin.

 

A doctor that doesn’t look like a doctor. Beady eyes glistening.

 

(This is my design.)

 

“Hello, Sherlock.”

 

Bookshelves. Paintings, real paintings, not the cheap stuff doctors put up on creamy walls to mask the silence of institutions. An office that doesn’t look like an office. More like a living room. The floor creaking with the weight of previous conversations, of bodies. A room of one’s own: a room inside a room. Two mirrors facing each other.

 

(This my design.)

 

The room not unlike glossy pictures you find in catalogues. Two leather chairs, their muted elegance not acknowledging clinical doctor-patient confidentiality in the slightest. A dinner table, dark, polished wood. A kitchen in the background, knifes glistening. A space swelling with silence, stilling life. Freezing it.

 

(This is my design.)

 

Sherlock’s eyes on the floor. Hannibal opposite him. His tablet heavy in his lap. The pressure of _words words words_ on his temples. His fingers itch.

 

“Denmark.”

 

“Excuse me?”

 

“You’re from Denmark.”

 

Hannibal smirks. “How did you know?”

 

The accent. Germanic. Scandinavian. Possibly Danish. Rhoticity finding its way into English, seasoning vowels like sea salt.

 

“Your accent.”

 

Another smirk.

 

“You’ve got a very good ear, Sherlock.”

 

I learned to swim as I was drowning.

 

“Sound waves are waves, after all.”

 

(Wave upon wave upon wave.)

 

“Speaking of which, I’ve got something for you.”

 

Hannibal hands Sherlock a copy of Virginia Woolf’s _The Waves_. Specks of gold against dark crimson. The first edition from The Hogarth Press. Sherlock can feel the ink seeping through his hands, can feel the words coming to life. A pocket of light you carry with you wherever you go, like a firefly in a glass jar. Making the walls all around you transparent, invisible.

 

_I begin to long for some little language … broken words, inarticulate words, like the shuffling of feet on pavement._

 

The weight of his body in a heavy leather chair. The weight of a gaze. Words like shuffing feet. The weight of the body. Sherlock draws his knees to his chest. Poetics of the body, poetics of the mind. Walls becoming transparent, vanish.

 

“You’re not broken, Sherlock.”

 

Hannibal speaking echoes, mirroring Victor’s hands in the air, John’s hands on his back. A room within a room within a room.

 

“Your life is still a life.”

 

Sherlock snorts, typing furiously. His tablet’s blare dangerously close to the red and blinding anger bubbling inside, at himself, at his helplessness.

 

“Have you read my file?”

 

(Expressive language skills, theory of mind, mindblindness. Words like plaster: tapped to your body until they become part of you, until they - rather than you - become indistinguishable. Try to remove them and you’ll end up losing a part of yourself, ripping out patches of skin and memory. Sticky side up.)

 

“I know what they say about autistic people having no theory of mind. I wouldn’t agree. I had a long argument with the colleague who made the argument. Had him here for dinner.”

 

Sherlock stays still. Suspended in the moment, frozen, like a deer in headlights. _What they say about autistic people. Incorrigibly distinguishable. Conditioned like Pavlov’s dog._ Words blinding, making it impossible to see. ( _See? See?)_

His hands fluttering, signing “I hate myself” before everything turns a bright, pulsing red. His fingers turning toward himself, again. _Nothing makes us more vulnerable than loneliness._ Fingernails digging into skin, scratching blindly. The weight of a body. Erase, vanish, disappear.

 

“Sherlock.”

 

Someone pulling him out. Again. Lungs raw and burning.

 

 _Now begins to rise in me the familiar rhythm; words that have lain dormant now lift, now toss their crests, and fall and rise, and falls again._ Rise and fall. Rise and fall. Fear no more, says the heart.

 

“You need to learn to forgive yourself.”

 

Forgiving yourself. A space vast and incomprehensible, like the sea.

 

"The mirror in your mind can reflect the best of yourself." _  
_

 

A room of one's own. Words that make the ground underneath your feet murmur with the weight of a thousand waves. Make it safe to stand on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So. Yes, I've written Hannibal (from the NBC series, portrayed by Mads Mikkelsen) into my story because why not. :)
> 
> Virginia Woolf because I just love her writing so much. Hannibal is someone who, apart from eating rude people, cherishes literature and beauty so I couldn't get the idea of him reading Virginia Woolf out of my head. I think he wouldn't mind. :)
> 
> (I don't want to depict Hannibal as a saint here, he's not the "good guy." However, I want that moral ambivalence between "good" and "bad" so I wrote him how I felt him when I first saw him in the show.)
> 
> Also please note that I'm not an expert on epilepsy. I'm an expert on myself. Seizures can affect you in a zillion ways and it doesn't always have to be a grand mal. Absence seizures can go undeteced. Likewise, people can be real jerks about it.
> 
> Finally, I wouldn't mind Hannibal having certain "autism experts" for dinner so they'd stop spreading their shitty theories about autistic people having no theory of mind.


End file.
